Page:Makers of British botany.djvu/115

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SACHS ON HALES
83

and in that character his fame is imperishable. Of the book which I have been using as my text, namely, Vegetable Staticks, Sachs says: "It was the first comprehensive work the world had seen which was devoted to the nutrition of plants and the movement of their sap....Hales had the art of making plants reveal themselves. By experiments carefully planned and cunningly carried out he forced them to betray the energies hidden in their apparently inactive bodies[1]." These words, spoken by a great physiologist of our day, form a fitting tribute to one who is justly described as the father of physiology.

  1. Geschichte d. Botanik, p. 515 (free translation).